VOORHEES, N.J. — Of all the abilities that define a successful head coach, none is more valuable than the courage not to panic.

Craig Berube showed that late in his first season as an NHL head coach. It’s why the Flyers are in the playoffs, beginning Thursday in New York. And it’s why they will have a chance to win, now that they are there.

After an odd start to a season that could have been a catastrophe, Berube had settled them, changing a few lines, massaging the defense, adjusting the clubhouse volume. But as the Flyers swirled toward April, their schedule toughened, their scoring sputtered, and their season, after all of that, was threatened.

To some, it might have been time to streamline things, to just try to win enough to secure a playoff spot, then worry later about everything else. To Berube, it was time to trust his instincts. That’s when he decided to ready two, not one, two goalies for the postseason. Because for all he knew, his No. 1 selection could wind up in a three-player, chain-reaction pile-up in the next-to-last game of the season, slam the back of his head to the ice and not be seen in public for more than a week.

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“I said all year long,” Berube was saying Wednesday, after practice in the Skate Zone, “I was going to use both goalies.”

So he did — even when the playoff race was tightening, and so were too many of the Flyers’ hands on their sticks. For when it might have been more comforting to ride Steve Mason through the pennant race, hoping to secure just enough points to ensure Games 83, 84, 85, 86 or more, Berube would not, did not, forget about Ray Emery.

“Listen, we have lots of games — lots of games — coming up,” Berube said in early April. “We need both of our goalies. That’s it. That’s the way I look at it. I’ve told you guys that for a while now. We need both of them.”

So he started his backup April 5 and April 10, and had plans to play him April 13. But that was before Emery would have to play the third period April 12 in Pittsburgh, after Mason was shoved to the ice, suffering an upper-body disorder — very high up, apparently, as high as possible, it’s been whispered.

Thursday, Berube will be rewarded for that preparation when Emery starts Game 1 of the postseason. Though the backup may or may not be effective, this much is certain: He will not be stale.

So there’s that.

“Things happen,” Berube said. “You are not always 100 percent. Good times find a way to get it done.”

Not that development of multiple contributors was revolutionary, but if any franchise needed to avoid depth-chart confusion in goal, it was the Flyers. That’s because as recently as 2011, their goaltending rotation was so convoluted, and the results so unsightly, that their exasperated chairman all but ordered Paul Holmgren to overpay for Ilya Bryzgalov.

So if only to supplement Mason, the Flyers last offseason signed Emery, who had just won 17 games, losing one, then losing a starting job in Chicago. It’s how the NHL sometimes works as it transitions from the regular season to the most frenzied postseason in professional sports. Emery had slipped behind Corey Crawford in Chicago, and the Blackhawks ridden their hotter goaltender to a Stanley Cup.

This year, Mason might wind up so forgotten.

“Even if you are not playing, or if there is a good chance you won’t play,” Emery said, “you still prepare like you are going to get a chance to get in there.”

After Mason was injured in Pittsburgh, Emery blew two third-period leads. Yet afterward, Berube insisted, “He won us the game.” And before he left the locker room, the head coach would interrupt an Emery press interview to give his goaltender a fist-bump. Emery, almost shocked, smiled, thanking his coach. Clearly, Berube knew he would need Emery in the playoffs. For that, he was starting the motivation early. The preparation, he’d already done, back when others might have panicked.